


Moonlight Magician

by ryulabird



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Magic Kaito
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Crossover Pairings, Harry is Kaito Kid, I Don't Even Know, Kaito is not Kaito Kid, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, let me have my fun
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:14:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21908050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryulabird/pseuds/ryulabird
Summary: Your soulmate's first words to you appear on your skin the moment they are born. Everyone has a soulmate, everyone. Soulmates are always equally compatible to each other, a perfect reflection and a perfect balance. But sometimes...having a soulmate is the worst!L and Harry are soulmates. This isn't exactly a good thing. Especially once L becomes the world's greatest detective, and Harry becomes the world's flashiest thief.
Relationships: Harry Potter/L
Comments: 69
Kudos: 693





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yes I'm doing a HP/DN crossover. Again. Back to my roots and all that, and it's a soulmate au too. Happy Hanukkah everyone!
> 
> \--- 
> 
> Don't you judge me. You will love this dumpster fire. >(

\- - - - - - - - 1 - - - - - - -

  
  


L didn't like his soul mark. He felt like it had too much control over his life. Surely that wasn't how soul marks were supposed to work.

こんばんは名探偵

_Good evening great detective_

Such simple words to carry his whole life. Well, not his whole life-- his birth certificate had no description of his soul mark, but he had it at least since before he entered Wammy's orphanage. Since the mark was on his back as well, L didn't know precisely when it appeared, but estimated that his soulmate was anywhere between one and four years younger than him. 

Whoever they were, their words had been manipulating his life ever since he translated it. 

It wasn’t as though being a detective wasn't fun, but L never really had the opportunity to try anything else. That wasn’t right, Wammy gave him every opportunity imaginable. It was just that everything else that was suggested for him didn't have the same allure 'detective' did. L himself turned away from all other options, and he knew it was entirely because of the words of someone he had yet to meet.

When he thought about it like that, he actually hated his soul mark. What right did his soulmate have to dictate his life anyway? Even if he couldn’t imagine anything else being more enjoyable than detective work. 

He hoped his soulmate was equally manipulated by _his_ words, whatever those were. 

He supposed this was the bonds of soulmates-- that they could affect each other even before meeting. Because detective work really was the best thing for him. It engaged his mind like nothing else did, challenged him like nothing else did. It was fun in a way that nothing else ever could be, and he might never have known if not for his soulmate.

He wondered sometimes what his first words to his soulmate would be. Which of them would speak first was hard to say, as it often was with soul marks that had a greeting like 'good morning' or 'good evening' in it. Would he be the one who spoke first, or would he merely respond to his soulmate’s greeting? 

L couldn’t see himself giving any similar greeting like ‘good evening’ or any such politeness at all. 

It was so unoriginal after all, to follow such boring etiquette with a soulmate meeting. His soulmate must be the polite type, and L was absolutely not. He wasn’t sure what that meant for their compatibility, but he was curious to find out.

However it went though, L liked to imagine that first meeting with his soulmate. It was perhaps the one thing he had in common with anyone else in the world.

In his mind, he often greeted his soulmate as 'Officer' or 'Underling' depending on his mood. Sometimes 'Baker-san' if he was in a very good mood. Sometimes 'Criminal-san' if he was in a bad one. Without knowing what the circumstances of their meeting, it was hard to guess what he would actually say beyond that. 

It certainly wouldn’t be ‘good evening’ though-- that he was certain of.

L never shared these vague fantasies out loud however, it was one thing he kept private even from his guardian. Wammy, for his part, was always pleased to wonder aloud with L about his soulmate. L knew it was partly because the man liked the thought of someone with more social skills being there for him when Wammy was… well, when Wammy would no longer be by his side.

But he also knew the man worried about him because L never responded to such discussions. L felt too foolish about fantasizing over something he had no information on to ever admit to it, so Wammy didn’t know how much L actually obsessed over his soulmate. 

It was so pointless. He didn’t know anything about his soulmate and he wouldn’t know what he wanted to say until he met them. All he knew was that he wanted it to be as impactful for them as their words were for him. But this was something he could never plan for, so any ideas he came up with were always eventually discarded.

He hated that his whole life had ended up revolving around one simple phrase, and it was only a basic greeting, not even anything interesting. Because he knew nothing else about the person, L could never think of anything better than calling his soulmate names. How could L admit such a stupid thing to Wammy?

If his soulmate had somehow chosen his life’s path, then he should be able to choose theirs. 

It wouldn't be fair if he couldn't control them at least as much as he was controlled, right? 

After a few years, he really hated even thinking about his soul mark, nevermind discussing it or his potential soulmate. Wammy thought he simply didn’t want a soulmate, and stopped bringing it up at all. He often gave L sorrowful glances after that and L never tried to correct his impression. 

He never wanted to admit to the man that what he hated most of all was that, even after more than a decade, he was still waiting for those words every time he met anyone. He only told Wammy that he hated meeting people. 

Then, when he was nineteen, he regretted that he hadn’t been honest. Maybe if he had he would have been able to go out searching for his soulmate. If he had never hidden himself away and pretended indifference, he would definitely have found his soulmate before the worst happened.

One night in late spring, his mark started to burn. 

The pain of it flashed over his whole body so fast, that at first he didn’t understand what was happening. Then the burning ache came again, right where the mark was on his back.

That night was the only time L could remember ever panicking, and the only time he ever woke Wammy up in the middle of the night. Yet, the hot sensations were already fading by the time Wammy got out of bed and lifted L’s shirt to check. 

“It hasn’t faded, my boy,” Wammy told him that night. “It’s still here, as clear as ever.”

“It absolutely did burn,” L insisted. “I wouldn’t make that up.”

Wammy lowered his shirt and patted his shoulder. “I didn’t say you did.’ 

He led L over to the chair by his desk and sat him down. L shuddered when Wammy’s warm hands left him, and a terrible cold settled over him. He brought his legs up to cover his toes with the hem of his flannel pajama bottoms and huddled. It would have been better to go to a mirror and check for himself than to bother Mr. Wammy. 

But because he hadn’t thought at all, now Wammy believed he was being foolish, and L didn’t feel satisfied that his mark was still there without being able to see it with his own eyes.

Wammy brought a blanket back from his closet and draped it around L’s shoulders. That didn’t make him feel any warmer, but at least the weight pushed away that empty feeling on his back. The mark _was_ still there. Wammy wouldn’t lie.

“Perhaps something happened,” Wammy said, and L lifted his head to regard the man. “To your soulmate, I mean.”

“They died and came back to life?” L scoffed internally while his face remained blank. 

“Possibly.”

L blinked and frowned. Wammy couldn’t be suggesting something that impossible.

“There are recorded cases where a soul mark reacts like that to a soulmate who has a heart attack and gets resuscitated,” Wammy said calmly.

“Someone younger than me had a heart attack?” L let his eyes fall into a flat, unimpressed droop and hoped Wammy could see it in the dim light.

“If they have a weak heart, or perhaps a murmur,” Wammy said encouragingly. Then he winced. “Or well, they could have been in surgery under anesthesia. The burning didn’t last longer than a few minutes, I take it, if you raced here right away-- so whatever happened they must have been given medical care within that time.”

L looked down as he turned the theory over in his head. He felt even more foolish for not being able to think of such a possibility on his own. He’d never heard of such a phenomenon before, but he could easily have researched it online. Mr. Wammy hadn’t needed to direct his reasoning since he was ten. What must he think of L now?

“It’s perfectly normal to be flustered by something like this,” Wammy told him gently. L clutched his legs closer and didn’t look up. “I don’t think there’s anyone in this world who wouldn’t be at least a little unbalanced after feeling their soul mark burn. It’s one of the most painful sensations humans can feel.”

“So…my soulmate is in a hospital then.” L still didn’t look up, concentrating instead on the feeling of the blanket bunched up by the chair back and pressed against his back.

Wammy hummed. “It is the most plausible reason for your mark to burn and then be fine.”

“Hn.”

If he’d found this mysterious soulmate by now, L would have known what was happening to them and wouldn’t have behaved so foolishly. 

But at least it was one more clue to their whereabouts. Japanese, between eighteen and fourteen years old, and currently hospitalized for something which may have stopped their heart for a period of about two minutes. 

Most people found their soulmates with far less to go on.

“Thank you, Mr. Wammy,” L said finally. He got up and folded the blanket over the chair arm before he turned to the door. “I’m sorry to bother you so late.”

“My boy,” Wammy stood and reached out for him, brushing his arm enough to make him stop. “It is no bother at all. You know you can always wake me if you need anything, and your soul mark burning is certainly a good enough reason for you to bother me at any time.”

“Hn.” L nodded since it seemed like Wammy expected something more, then left when the man sighed and suggested a warm drink to take to bed. He could get it on his own, Wammy needed his sleep more than L did.

He still hadn’t decided what he would say to his soulmate when they met. It had been at least three years since he made himself stop wondering about it, but now he found the thought circling again and again in his head the way it had when he was still a child.

That imagined first meeting haunted him for days after that night. When he checked the mark with a mirror in the bathroom each morning, when he wrapped himself in a blanket and leaned back in his chair over breakfast, when bid goodnight to Wammy, and went to the bathroom to check the mark again. Over and over he thought about it-- _Good evening, great detective_ … and then what?

Perhaps when they finally met, he would say only だいじょうぶか.

_Are you okay?_

\- - - - - - - -

Harry didn’t know he had a soul mark until he was seven. Why would the Dursley’s tell him anything that important after all? But seven was when he got undressed in front of strangers for the first time, when his class got to visit a pool for the day. 

It was sort of embarrassing, to have everyone crowd around him the way they did without knowing why. But his was the only foreign soul mark in the entire school, so for just that day he became a minor celebrity. He enjoyed it as much as he could and Dudley couldn’t do a thing.

At least, not until they went home, and Dudley told his parents all about the weird, unnatural mark Harry showed off at school that everyone ogled. He ended up locked in his cupboard for two whole weeks for showing off his freakishness, and was ordered to never, ever show the mark to anyone ever again.

There wasn’t anyone he wanted to share it with anyway. After two weeks by himself, hearing the Dursley’s talk about how disturbing it would be to have a soul mark that was just gibberish, he was very much over the excitement of having a foreigner for a soulmate.

That wasn’t to say he didn’t want one, but if he couldn’t even talk to them, how would he know when they met?

So when he was finally able to go back to school, Harry didn’t bring up his soul mark to anyone. He went straight to the library, and found every language book he could with writing like “wormy scribbles” and tried to check them against the messy, backwards copy he made by looking over his shoulder in the bathroom.

It definitely wasn’t anything like English, but he thought it might be Chinese. There were lots of curvy, flowing bits, as well as some straight lines like stars in that language-- definitely similar to his mark!

The school only had one language book with Chinese in it, and that was the closest to what his soulmark looked like. The school book wasn’t easy to read, but Harry borrowed it anyway. He wouldn’t be able to take it home without risking Dudley destroying it, but he could hide it in his desk at school and study it between classes.

It took Harry three years to carefully gather enough Chinese language books the Dursley’s couldn’t find and destroy to teach himself, and by then he finally realized… his soul mark wasn’t Chinese. So he had to start all over again.

He never got the chance though, because the library wouldn’t let him borrow anymore books. Dudley figured out where he was hiding them, and none could be returned. He spent a year trying to figure out how he was going to get ahold of the right books to translate his mark and never came up with anything the Dursley’s couldn’t ruin.

He thought, if nothing else, when summer came he might be able to hitch a ride to the next town over. He could borrow from that library with a fake name, and he would find somewhere in the park to hide the books, and hide out there to study.

Of course his plan didn’t work out the way he hoped.

He was able to get to the other library and check out two books, one Korean and one Japanese primers. He was even able to hide them where he knew Dudley and his gang would never find them-- up a tree. But that didn’t stop other children from finding them, and the books disappeared only a couple weeks after Harry checked them out.

His last hope was the new school he’d be going to in the fall. Dudders would be off to boarding school while Harry stayed here, and without him around to destroy his stuff, he might be able to keep books in either the school or the house. Either way, he would find out what his soulmate would say to him, no matter what.

Then his birthday came, and he met Hagrid and found out he would be going to Hogwarts-- much farther away from the Dursleys. Best of all, he had enough money to just _buy_ whatever books he needed, so that’s what he did. Hagrid was happy to take him back out into muggle London, and they got language books for every Asian language Harry could find, even a couple in Chinese again, because it turned out there were different kinds of Chinese instead of just one like he thought. 

The books barely fit in his trunk on top of his school supplies, and it was horribly heavy when he had to lug it upstairs at the Dursley’s house.

It was so worth it. Harry would finally get to leave the Dursley’s, he could get a photo of his soul mark, and he had so many language books that the right one _had_ to be among them. He would finally find out what his soul mark said!

Of course, once he finally did, Harry had plenty of other things to worry about. He might not even live long enough to meet his soulmate after all.

He might not even want to….

もう逃げない

Japanese, and the third language Harry learned by the time he was twelve.

_You won’t get away_

Why would his soulmate say that to him? The first time they met… maybe they hated him already. Maybe he’d done something wrong before they even knew who the other was. It certainly made an already terrible year much, much worse.

At least he had friends now who understood soulmates didn’t always make the best first impression. Ron and Hermione went through plenty of spats where they wished they’d never met at all-- until fourth year when they figured out having Victor around as their third made interactions much easier. They were lucky to have such an easy answer as being a trio of soulmates that only balanced out all together.

But what was he supposed to do? What had been the point of learning Japanese, if all it got him was knowing when he was being threatened! He would rather have never known what his soul mark said in that case.

Harry resolved then and there that the only thing he would say in return was 絶対に逃げます!

_I absolutely will get away!_

Because, soulmate or not, Harry wasn’t going to let some stranger tell him what to do. He almost looked forward to the day he would get to throw those words back in his soulmate’s smug face.

Then he died.

Harry didn’t regret it. He didn’t. 

Everything went much better than he ever could have hoped after all. Voldemort was dead, his friends were alive, and all the death eaters were either on the run or already caught.

Life was finally looking up for him, and his soulmate would never, ever have to know how close Harry came to not having the chance to meet them. Because he would-- he could go to Japan right now if he wanted, and he could actually start meeting people until he found his rude, possibly dangerous soulmate.

A whole world of possibilities lay before Harry for maybe the first time in his life.

He hardly knew what to do with himself. He couldn’t _actually_ just pop over to another country, even for his soulmate. What would his friends say? He’d already vanished on them once….

He spent three years trying to fit their and the wizarding world’s expectations. He took his N.E.W.T.S. after a summer studying with his friends. He joined the Aurors with Ron after he got enough EEs and Os. He ate dinner with the Weasleys, joined Hermione for a few classes when she wanted to attend muggle uni, trained every day with Ron and other Auror cadets.

It was everything he always thought he wanted when he left Hogwarts. It was so boring!

When was he supposed to meet his soulmate in Japan at this rate? British Aurors never had any reason to travel that far away from home. If a dark wizard fled to another country, then the local aurors would catch them and have them sent back. He thought he might meet his soulmate in the university-- there were lots of foreign students he could talk to, and Harry even did, perfecting the languages he already knew and picking up new ones. 

But everyone he met always used English first when meeting him, which he couldn’t fault them for. He always wanted to practice other languages he learned with anyone who knew them too.

He wanted to go already. Now that he knew for sure that he actually got to have a life, it felt like he was still on pause or something. It felt like he only had a purpose when he was afraid to die, and now that nothing was threatening him he was just...lost.

The longer he had to really think about it, the more he wondered if he even wanted to meet his soulmate. _You won’t get away…._ The more he thought about it, the more he really started to hate his soul mark.

There was always so much going on for him, what with school, the Dursleys, Voldemort, and death eaters, that Harry never really thought he would get to meet whoever would say those words to him. But...now he might and he didn’t know if he would like the one who would say them.

It really wasn’t fair that someone he hadn’t even met yet could give him this much stress, but they did.

After three years of trying, he finally admitted to his friends that it wasn’t working. His life wasn’t what he really wanted, his job didn’t feel fullfilling and his soulmate...might be someone he didn’t want anything to do with. 

They didn’t have any idea how to help him, but they promised to try. That was when something finally came that turned everything around for him.

On his twentieth birthday, he got the rest of what was left for him from Dumbledore’s will. It was held back because, well...not even Dumbledore thought he would live this long.

It was a letter, explaining a request to find something his friend and mentor Nicolas Flamel had lost and couldn’t remember enough about it to describe properly. It was one of his first experiments in creating the Philosopher’s Stone. Incomplete and not nearly as miraculous as the real thing, but still powerful and dangerous in the wrong hands. The letter instruction that the search be kept absolutely secret from anyone in the wizarding world, even those he trusted. No one could resist the lure of endless wealth and youth after all. 

The first thing Harry did was tell his friends. He’d found something to give him purpose and they promised to help him after all. They did exactly that, brainstorming with him for weeks on how to accomplish Dumbledore’s request.

How do you recover a precious stone that could be any color, any shape, and might be in the possession of muggles, all without letting anyone know you were looking for it? 

Magic was out of the question-- that would only attract the wrong kind of attention, from both wizards and muggles. Trying to buy it was impossible as well-- Flamel had long since forgotten what color the lost stone was, and Harry didn’t have enough gold to buy even a fraction of all the precious stones in the world to make sure he got it.

It was a puzzle that Dumbledore never found an answer for and with Voldemort coming into power, something he had pushed to the end of his priorities. The next generation could take care of it, he wrote in the missive delivered to Harry, and there was only one person he knew he could trust with such a task once he was gone.

Harry was touched, really, but he still had no better ideas either. Until Ron joked “Maybe we could just steal jewels and return them if they aren’t the right one?”

Hermione thought that was preposterous, but Harry called it brilliant. They still couldn’t use magic, they couldn’t risk exposing the magical world to the muggles, and they couldn’t risk any dark wizards learning of a lost stone belonging to Nicolas Flamel-- anyone would guess it was a Philosopher's Stone or something close to it.

But maybe they could _pretend_ to have magic. It would keep the magical world out of their business if everyone thought whatever they did was only muggle tricks, and if they really, really needed to escape the muggles, a little real magic mixed into a bag of tricks would definitely confuse them.

The more Harry and Ron talked it out, already planning and debating, the more interested Hermione became and soon...they even had a name, based on the one thing that would reveal Flamel’s stone among all the others. 

The Moonlight Magician-- soon to be the best jewel thief in the world, but who never kept the treasures he stole. At least, he would return all but one, and then he would disappear forever. A thief that would stand out, until he needed to hide, who would confound all the muggles who saw him, but look perfectly innocent to all the wizards who caught word of him.

This was going to be incredible. The perfect distraction from a life he didn’t know how to live and a soulmate he wasn’t sure he wanted, and Ron and Hermione would be with him the whole way. Life really was looking up.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here you go! Another (totally unbeta-ed) chapter-- this was always going to be a multi chapter story, I just missed checking a box when I first posted it!
> 
> The soulmate angst and hilarity must continue!! Let me know what you guys think, and hope you're all doing well under quarantine or stay at home or whatever your situation. Stay safe!

  
\- - - - - 2 - - - - -

After four years of fruitless searching, L accepted that he had many other things to demand of his soulmate when they finally met than just  _ ‘are you okay.’ _ Obviously whoever they were they were fine, and any concern on his part would only be misplaced. Almost two years were spent in Japan, operating under the name ‘Ryuuzaki’ as a consulting detective, and the only thing he had to show for it was a decent reputation with the NPA.

If he ever managed to find his headache of a soulmate, he would at least have an appropriately Japanese identity to use around them. Beyond that, the whole effort was a waste in his opinion. 

The cases in Japan weren’t interesting at all, while the international scene got more and more exciting as L’s real reputation gained renown with world policing agencies. By working remotely on those more interesting cases, he managed to corner the top three spots for the best detectives in the world, and no one knew those aliases were all him. 

It wasn’t a bad achievement, but L was still frustrated.

Obviously his soulmate knew he was a detective when they met, so at least he knew the Ryuuzaki alias would come in handy eventually. But waiting for that time when he had nothing else to go on was slowly driving him insane.

Against Wammy’s advice, he moved back to England. If he had to wait, he might at least do so where he was most comfortable. He could still consult remotely as Ryuuzaki if needed. 

What he wanted now was to flesh out the other detective aliases, maybe put them on the street for once. He rather liked the idea of making the face of Deneuve a more socially acceptable version of himself. Wammy would do well as the face of Eraldo Coil. ‘L’ would remain anonymous behind a computer screen, and maybe he would create an anonymous face for Wammy to use with it...a Japanese name would work. Not for any particular reason of course, but if he happened to spend more time in Japan in the future, then he would technically have two aliases he could use there.

Of course, it was only a few months before all his plans fell apart again.

The police liked meeting in person far more than through a screen, so after their physical debuts, both Denevue and Eraldo got many more requests from Interpol and national agencies than ‘L’ did. 

This, despite the fact that L purposely ensured his anonymous alias got to solve all the hardest cases which the other two passed over. The power of being personable easily overshadowed any actual skill, and the proof of this made L sour.

It didn’t help that L made the Deneuve persona more social than he was for exactly that reason, and so shouldn’t be surprised. 

But he expected more professionalism from those who dedicated themselves to catching criminals. Basing an investigation’s outcome on a popularity contest between detectives instead of their statistically verifiable success rates was idiotic.

Even worse was that Deneuve’s personality was exhausting to maintain long term. If Interpol wanted to work with him so much, they would have to do so over the phone from now on.

Wammy tried to cheer him up by helping to find cases that would be on ‘L’s level, but since ‘Eraldo’ was easily the most liked of the three aliases, he was out of the country more often than he wasn’t. At L’s direction of course, but the absence stung as much as the feeling that he was being passed over.

It also didn’t help that all the cases Wammy found for him were never as interesting as they first appeared, each being solved in less than a day while L also worked on cases for Eraldo and Deneuve. By the time Wammy asked if he could take a break and stay home for the holidays, L was bored of everything.

His soulmate was utterly mistaken about him being a detective. He was going to quit soon if it stayed this dull. After the cases he had were all closed, L simply refused everything else that came to him. Even those brought by Wammy.

It took less than a week for him to stop leaving his room at Wammy House. Another week before both the staff and the children of the house assumed he’d left the country again.

By the New Year, Wammy had enough of L’s sulking and came knocking at his door, arms full of papers. L didn’t invite him in and walked away with a frown when he saw them. The top pages looked like email printouts.

"L, honestly.” Wammy followed him in and closed the door behind him. “If you would at least open the email I sent you, I wouldn’t have to waste so much paper."

"Not interested."

"You might be--"

"I read the subject lines," L interrupted. "They’re all boring cases."

"For you, I understand," Wammy sighed wearily. "But I truly believe this one might interest you. It's unusual. Do you remember that thief that started making headlines this year?"

L slouched so his head tilted over his shoulder and gave a silent huff. 

"The thief you tried to interest me in four months ago? The one that sends notices before the crime?"

"Yes!" Wammy brought the printouts over to L's coffee table. "Normally this thief sends a notice with the time and date he will steal whichever large gem he's after. But this time, the notice is in code."

L begrudgingly perked up. "A code?"

Wammy smiled at him. "A riddle. Both the time and location are uncertain because the police haven't been able to figure it out. They've had it for three days now, and the notices are never sent more than a week in advance."

"Hn." L plucked the top sheet off the table. It only had a picture of a handwritten piece of paper with a ridiculous drawing of a face at the bottom and a crescent moon at the top.  _ "Born of June..." _

"As I said, the notice is never sent more than a week in advance, so the police don’t know when he will strike." Wammy spread the other papers across the table. "There is also some uncertainty over what the thief's target is."

L had to admit, this was more interesting than he thought it would be. 

_ Born of June, over shifting sands, the moon will cry, to lose its crown... _

"Kid...." L frowned at the grinning drawing beside the odd name. It was wearing a top hat with a...monocle?

"Ah, yes," Wammy chuckled. "This thief also has an interesting name. I believe there was some drama over it as well."

L looked over the other papers. Several images of different jewels that could be related to ‘moon’ or ‘crown’ and the museum that had received the notice, as well as a picture of another handwritten note. The back of the notice he just read. L placed the first down and delicately picked the other up. 

_ "P. S. - Test the limits of experience...." _

"That is also giving the police problems. Kid's notices don't come with post scripts, this is the first, and with it being a riddle too..."

"I suppose this is something to do for now," L said as he set the paper down and shifted through what had been laid out for him. "At least until something more interesting comes up."

"Of course," Wammy said, sounding relieved. L supposed his sulking must have caused more problems than he thought. "There's a box from the bakery you like downstairs. I'll get a fresh pot of tea for you."

"Bribery after you get me to agree to work? The order is off, Mr. Wammy."

"It's not bribery," Wammy said cheerfully as he got up. "I just wanted to make sure you would actually enjoy this case. You haven't liked any lately."

"Hn, we'll see where this goes," L said, already distracted as he read through the summaries of the last five Kid cases for him to compare to. Unusual didn’t even begin to define this particular thief’s modus operandi.

Maybe he should have gotten involved earlier-- it certainly seemed more interesting than theft cases normally did. Kid apparently liked a show, and rather than avoiding being seen, he went out of his way to attract attention when he made his heists. 

But then, if L had agreed to work on that Kid case from four months ago, there wouldn't be this riddle notice now and he was sure solving it would be half the fun of taking Kid down. 

At least there was some reward for waiting. 

\- - -

The case turned out to be far more interesting than L ever would have guessed for a simple theft. Of course, he soon learned that nothing was simple in a Kid case. 

He figured out when Kid would make his heist-- only one jewellery piece with large gems in the museum's collection was being shipped in the week following the notice. A colonial era, European style, silver tiara made in Punjab, set with twenty-four polished moonstones. 

Moonstone was a common birthstone for June and with other obvious references to both moon and crown elsewhere in Kid's notice, L wasn’t sure how the police had missed it. 

The route the shipment would take was by truck from Multan to an international port where it would then be shipped overseas for another museum to exhibit. There was only one short stretch of road where the truck would be passing through a desert before reaching the port. So there was the shifting sands clue-- Kid would take the tiara when the truck went through the desert.

The only thing he couldn’t figure out was the post-script, It didn’t seem to relate to anything specific. Rather, L suspected it was an open challenge, a taunt from the thief. This was the first Kid notice to be sent publicly-- dozens of exact copies were dropped all around the museum for anyone who passed by to read.

But what no one, not even L, realized before it was too late was that Kid was not the only thief after this particular treasure. From his computer in England, L was forced into the role of spectator rather than investigator, as the tiara became the object of an intense game of keep away with Kid, the police, and at least a dozen more practical, modern-day thieves. 

In less than two days, the police managed to capture eight internationally wanted criminals and five more locally known criminals. All of them were considered armed and dangerous, and most had killed during their previous robberies. None of them was Kid. 

As for the tiara, it was returned to the museum in a box, each stone removed without any damage done to them or the tiara. The return note from Kid saying they weren't what he wanted was on the back of a Polaroid picture of a stone relief that showed a woman with a decorative belt sash. 

At first, no one knew what to think of it. But upon inspecting the moonstones to check for counterfeits, it was discovered that all the jewels had minute traces of gold on them-- so little that it had previously been hidden by the silver settings of the tiara. That was when the curators of the museum figured out Kid's note while the police were still scratching their heads. 

In the relief picture, three large, smooth gems were shown in the sash's design, with seven smaller, smooth gems surrounding them, like flowers. If Kid's photo was to be trusted, then the moonstones were once part of a chandra haar, a decorative gold and jewel encrusted piece that hung over a woman's hip. A ‘garland of moons,' so named because of the golden balls forming chains that were typical to the jewelry. 

Thanks to the traces of gold found upon close inspection, it went without question that the stones were all originally set in a gold piece, and with a method that was not used by European style jewelry. A method that would leave such traces on the stones was a traditional jeweler’s technique, kundan, where softened pure gold was carefully pressed around the edges of a gem to harden and hold it in place.

If it were true, it wouldn’t be the first time gems from a traditional piece were taken to be fitted in a new, European style jewelry, especially during the colonial era.

The curators were ecstatic at the discovery, and L could only watch from afar as everyone forgot entirely about Kid and just patted themselves on the back for all their successes. Thirteen dangerous criminals in prison awaiting trial, and a lost cultural treasure no one was looking for was found and after more research, would probably be specially refitted to reflect its heritage. 

L was fascinated and frustrated in turns.

The criminals were all found disarmed and unconscious while the police were chasing Kid. The moonstones were only 'discovered' because Kid did what the museum never would have and ripped the stones out of their settings, then sent it all back with a helpful picture. 

Everything, from beginning to end, had been under Kid’s control the whole time while the thief danced around everyone, dressed like a stage magician and laughing at them. L could do nothing more than watch it all unfold.

It was the best case he’d been on in years, even if he thought it was stupid that everyone else considered it a success when Kid-- the only reason  _ he  _ became involved in the first place-- had escaped. After it was over, he hacked Interpol to download every case file on Kid they had.

A magician who stole precious gems only to return them. He even warned people he was coming, and was known to never use anything worse than sleeping drugs and rope against anyone. He ran circles around the police and amazed both them and the general populace with extravagant magic tricks when he escaped.

L started putting together a profile, even though Interpol had already made one, because theirs was terrible and left too much data out. Once L had the chance to see this thief in person, he would probably rewrite it anyway. There were so many things he knew could be left out of official reports. In fact…

“Wammy,” L called across the room. Wammy was finishing the report L, as Eraldo Coil, had to send on his participation in the Kid case. The man looked up from writing, mouth quirked in a smile, and L wanted to pout. Wammy was far too pleased by how easily L had been cheered up by this case.

He frowned and tried to look serious.

“Could you go through this list,” L gestured briefly at his computer where he was typing out the names of witnesses he’d pulled out of different Kid case reports, “and contact them all as Eraldo? I would like to call them all for follow up interviews about their interactions with Kid.”

“In person?” Wammy sat up, eyebrows raised.

L scrunched up and looked back at the computer he was still typing at. “...Perhaps. If they agree to it.”

He ignored Wammy for the rest of the night, concentrating instead on how he would approach witnesses who, according to the reports, had somehow become fans of the thief that used and stole from them. People were such fools. Just because someone was charming and personable, it didn’t mean they were worthy of admiration.

Even if the reports of Kid’s crimes were some of the most interesting cases he had ever seen.

* * *

Being Kid was the most amazing thrill. It was even better than flying-- although there was quite a lot of flying in Kid capers, so maybe it was only better because it added an extra bit of excitement to what Harry already loved. He tried his best to act serious and like he was only interested in finding the missing jewel, but he was certain that his friends could all tell how much happier he was. His only defense was that they enjoyed planning and helping with the capers as much as he did.

“You have  _ got _ to let me help you guys the next time you do this!” Parvati said at the after-mischief-managed-party. “That was absolutely wicked!”

All of his friends really enjoyed the capers-- Ron, Hermione were only the first, but as things became more and more complicated, Harry opened the secret out to other DA members. He knew it wasn’t exactly what Dumbledore had asked for, but he also knew that impossible tasks were easier to accomplish with more people to help.

“It was, wasn’t it?” Ron clinked his mug of butterbeer with Ginny. “Those thieves never even saw us coming!”

“And the moon gems are all accounted for and the museum is already reaching out to local jewelers to reset them properly!” Ginny cheered.

“Your family must be very happy to hear about it,” Hermione smiled at Parvati and Padma as they split a tray of curry with Luna. “Even if it’s still in muggle hands anyway.”

Padma waved her off. “Oh, no worries,” she said. “The charms on the jewels all broke when they were reset in that stupid tiara. It’s actually pretty hard to bind magic to gems, most of the spellwork was woven into the gold setting.”

“But--” Parvati interjected with a grin, “we are  _ so _ our aunties favorites now!”

“Yep!” Padma joined her in grinning. “We can’t tell them about helping Kid or anything--”

“But we  _ did _ tell the family that we were the ones who planted that photo and postcard when we heard the moonstones were stolen!”

“They totally think we are responsible for the world finding out how those rocks are really supposed to look!”

“Well, you two  _ are _ the reason anyone knows that,” Harry laughed. He thanked George for passing the naan and reached for one of the curry plates. “It’s not like the Moonlight Magician would ever have known about the original setting--”

Everyone groaned and Ron shoved his shoulder.

“You’ve got to get over it mate,” George laughed at him.

“Yeah, Harry,” Ginny said through giggles. “Kid is how you’re known--”

“--and Moonlight Magician is just a really stupid name--” Ron added.

“--and no one is going to let you hold onto it,” Hermione finished.

Harry pouted. “I thought it was a good name--”

“It’s very lovely, Harry,” Luna said soothingly. “But Kid the Phantom Thief is just more fun, and you are having a lot of fun, aren’t you?”

Harry sighed and stuffed his mouth instead of answering. George patted his back consolingly, but he also smothered a laugh at the same time. “You guys are awful. Worst friends ever.”

“You’ll get over it,” Pavarti said with a regal sniff. Everyone else started laughing again, and eventually Harry joined in. “Anyway,” she continued, “thanks for letting us pick your target this time. I know you weren’t really planning to go after anything like this.”

“Yeah, this means a lot to our family,” Padma said. “It doesn’t matter that the spells on the stones are broken-- our aunties have been telling us stories about that chandra haar for  _ years!” _

“Are you sure they don’t want it back though?” Hermione asked hesitantly. The rest of the group quieted down. No one was quite sure if it would be okay to actually steal something-- even if they were only returning it to the rightful owners. No one else would know that’s what they were doing, and Kid-- Harry-- would be known as a true thief.

“Oh no!” Parvati shook her head. “No, that doesn’t matter. Our family sold it after all-- no one’s upset about not having it. It was just--”

“Why the  _ hell _ did the bastard granddad sold it to have to get it reset into a stupid looking tiara!” Padma huffed. “It wasn’t even attractive! I mean-- the spells were already wearing out, no muggle could have activated it, it’s why the family decided to sell it to muggles anyway-- but if they’d known the moonstones would just be taken out and put in that ugly headpiece--”

“Then they wouldn’t have sold it, and wouldn’t have bought passage to Britain, and we’d all still be living with granduncle Bandu and his family,” Parvati interrupted with a loud and exhausted sigh. “Honestly, you’re starting to sound just like auntie Anjali!”

“It’s because that story has been repeated over and over since we were in diapers!” Padma put her hands on her hips and glared at her sister while beside her Luna piled three different curries onto her plate. When Padma finally noticed and chased her off, she just shrugged and scooped half of it onto Luna’s plate before she started eating.

“I know,” Pavarti drawled. “But! Now, we never have to hear about it again!” She turned to Harry and gave him a wide grin. “All thanks to our heroic Kid!”

Harry swallowed down his food with a gulp of butterbeer. “Not like I did it alone, you all helped.”

“So modest!” George crooned. “We’re your behind the scenes support-- you’re the dashing knight in white for everyone to goggle!”

“And point guns at,” Hermione interrupted solemnly. The levity of the party dropped like a stone. “There were a lot more people shooting at Harry this time than last time.”

“Yeah, but no one hit me,” Harry tried to reassure her.

“Yet!” Hermione glared at him, but her face fell quickly. “Look-- I know, you’re going to do this with or without our help if I try to talk you out of it, but we really need to find a way to protect you next time instead of just hoping you’re fast enough to dodge everything!”

“Next time we won’t be interrupting another thief group’s plans--”

“How do you know?” Hermione demanded. “We had no idea those people would be after the museum shipment at the same time you’d be going for the tiara! How do you know you’re not going to stumble into another criminal’s plans until it’s too late!”

Harry didn’t know how to answer. The other thieves had caught him by complete surprise, and it was only by incredible luck that he was able to lure them all into George, Ginny, and Ron following along on brooms, for them to subdue while he kept the police’s attention away until they were needed. He’d felt pretty good about how well they’d pulled the whole thing off despite the unexpected competition.

“Uh, you know,” Padma said hesitantly. “I might have an idea.”

Harry, Hermione, and everyone else turned to her. She smiled as brightly as possible.

“I started a really intensive workshop with a friend Madam Malkin introduced me to, and I’m learning about how to weave more powerful spells into cloth before sewing them into outfits,” she said. “I haven’t got too far into a specialty yet, but I’ve heard from some of the other students about different methods we can learn.”

“And?” Hermione said in confusion. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Oh! Padma, you’re brill!” Parvati suddenly grinned and turned to Harry. “She can remake your costume!”

“Oh, hey,” George also turned to Harry with a slow smile. “That might work.”

“Okay, Hermione’s not the only one confused,” Harry said. “Someone explain please.”

“Protection charms woven into your clothes,” Luna said happily. “It would be much stronger than charms applied to them after.”

“They can be more specific too!” Padma leaned forward eagerly. “For fire, or potion explosions, or creature claws-- or bullets!”

Hermione sucked in a breath. “You could really do that?” she asked.

“Well,” Padma blushed. “Not yet-- like I said, I only just started the workshop, and the more powerful the effect you want, the more complicated the spellweaving has to be, but….”

“But-- you’re brilliant!” Parvati said proudly. “And Harry will be styling your awesome clothing before we know it!”

Ginny laughed. “You hear that Harry? You’re going to be Padma’s first model!”

“Er, well,” Harry swallowed the sudden embarrassment and put on a mysterious ‘Kid’ smile. “I’ll do my best to show your work off on the world stage!”

His friends all stared at him for a second, then everyone fell into mad cackling. George and Ginny immediately started imitating him and swooning, trading off now and again. Ron and Padma laughed until they turned red. Hermione giggled and turned back to her food with Luna, who smiled happily at them all. Across from him Parvati turned dark with a blush and sputtered.

“Dear god, no wonder all the capers you do involving women go off without a hitch!” She finally said, and threw her napkin at him.

Harry dropped the charming thief act and laughed along with them all. It might seem strange to an outsider, but it felt like he was finally living his life. He couldn’t think of anything that could ever make him happier than he was right now. Not even a git of a soulmate.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another un-beta'd, barely edited chapter! Woo! XD
> 
> I am basing this loosely on Kaito Kid 1412 and Kid appearances in Detective Conan, but for obvious reasons, Kuroba and Conan do not exist here. I know, I love them too, but Harry and L have effectively taken their places in this fic. I'm also mixing up the timeline of Kid's heists, as well as their locations-- Harry and L aren't tied to Japan the way Kuroba and Conan are, so they get to play on a wider stage. I'm not going into much detail about some of these cases, but if you are interested in what happens on Kid heists, you should be able to find episodes on Crunchyroll, and some are on Youtube! 
> 
> Thank you all so much for the incredible response to this crazy idea, and I hope you all enjoy this! Stay safe out there~

\- - - - - 3 - - - - - -

  
  


Interviewing those who had interacted with Kid during his heists did not go the way L planned. For one thing, far too few people were willing to schedule meetings in person-- even though L was the one traveling to meet them. Most weren’t interested in talking to him at all, so L was forced to use connections Eraldo had made with Interpol to even arrange anything.

That wasn't annoying in the least. 

Or it wouldn't be so long as it got him more information about Kid anyway. Although, even with Eraldo's connections, many of the prime witnesses still only agreed to talk over the phone or through the computer. 

Phone interviews were not as effective in his opinion, because he was unable to read the unconscious expressions people made. But after he actually spoke to some of the witnesses, he decided he was better off not seeing most of these people in person to begin with.

They were Kid fans. Almost every single person the thief met face to face, was an ardent fan of his-- even the police officers! Three of them, L could understand why-- Kid had literally saved their lives during his heists. Two from falling and one from gunshot-- another heist where Kid had competition it looked like.

But there were at least five officers Kid had knocked out, tied up, and impersonated, and they all tried to hide a pervasive admiration for the thief as well! It was incomprehensible.

“Well, I don’t really know how to say it,” Inspector Nakamori said when L suggested officers might be more on Kid’s side than the law’s. They had worked together on a smuggling case, so Nakamori had been more than happy to discuss Kid with the helpful ‘Ryuuzaki.’ “I don’t think anyone would just give up a chance to catch him if they could but…”

“But?”

“Kid makes sure no one gets hurt,” the man admitted with a huff. “Stakeouts can be incredibly stressful since you don’t always know what’s going to happen, and most criminals won’t hesitate to use violence to get away.”

“...But not Kid.” L wasn’t sure why, but he felt very annoyed. Everyone  _ was  _ aware that Kid was still a thief, even if he was playing like a child, with the police, weren’t they? He would have thought more people would be annoyed with him for taking them lightly. He certainly would have been.

“Never Kid!” Nakamori boasted, and he sounded almost proud. “We still never know what’s going to happen, but one thing’s for sure-- everyone will go home to their families in the morning! It’s...relaxing, I guess? I get more volunteers for Kid stakeouts than anything else.”

“I understand. Thank you for your time,” L said flatly before hanging up. Inspectors and detectives the world over had said much the same when pressed about Kid. It was well known in the police community that Kid was never seen with a gun or knife, and that if anything did happen-- someone slipped off a stair or rooftop, or another criminal tried to take hostages-- then Kid was always the first to jump to the rescue.

Heroism from a criminal whose motive for crime seemed to be pure entertainment shouldn’t have endeared so many law-keepers, but it had. Many were still annoyed by the thief and his overconfidence, but most secretly liked him. He made a dangerous job feel safe and fun, and his ‘magic tricks’ were supposedly amazing to see in person.

Not all police shared this feeling though, thank goodness. Detective Delon from the police judiciaire of France was very much  _ not _ a fan of Kid. Unfortunately, not many people were a fan of Detective Delon-- he was himself known for using excessive force, and many people thought he’d been treated too kindly by Kid when they met. First in line to say so, in fact, was Princess Anne of the Duchy of Sabrina, who had technically been the victim of that particular case with Delon.

“I am absolutely not pressing charges though!” The princess declared over the video conference, face firm and her hands clenched into fists. “Kid was amazing, and he did exactly what I wanted!”

From his spot behind Wammy, who was pretending to be Eraldo, L’s face turned sour. He highly doubted the princess had wanted Kid to dress up as her and lead the police on a ridiculous chase before being caught-- and stripped in front of cameras-- before escaping in a cloud of smoke. But he supposed she might be vicious enough to want Detective Delon floating thirty meters up outside her hotel, tied to a balloon by his ankles.

“I am only interested in learning more about Kid’s personality,” Wammy said with a kind smile. “I promise you, I am quite aware that the theft you were involved in has been removed as a chargeable offense in Kid’s list of crimes.”

“So long as you know!” Princess Anne said primly. “As for his personality, hmm,” she put a finger delicately over her lips and smiled. “Let’s just say he is charming and fun!”

“Charming and fun?” Wammy chuckled. “Do you mean to say he stole your heart that night as well as your jewel?”

“Yes!” Princess Anne clapped happily with a wide grin. One of her aides came forward quickly and spoke in her ear. She frowned, but eventually sighed. “That is to say, he certainly did no such thing. I am engaged you know.”

The aide retreated back to the wall, and the princess watched him out of the corner of her eye before she turned back to the screen and smirked mischievously. 

“But you know, he was very charming! And he let me help come up with the magic trick to get him and the diamond out of the building!” Princess Anne grinned while her aide hurried back to her side with an exasperated expression. 

This was the reason L had wanted a personal interview with certain people-- the official transcripts in many cases had redactions that hid important clues like these. Kid could manipulate his victims into helping him, simply because he was so charming.

Nearly every woman Kid encountered personally agreed on that point, and a few of the men.

In one case, that L was sorry he ever touched, Kid somehow managed to seduce all three women in the family he stole from, and they simply allowed him to walk away with their heirloom while the men of the family and police watched in shock.

_ “He was just so sweet!” _

_ “Way more handsome than any of the boys in my school!” _

_ “He made me feel like a maiden, hehehe! Such a charmer, that phantom thief!” _

They didn’t seem to care that Kid was obviously a manipulative liar who stole from them, and trying to bring that up never went well.

“I’m not sure what you want me to tell you,” Megumi Furuhata said. She was the first non-police who agreed to a face to face meeting, despite having one of the more hectic schedules to work with. “The police decided that the Kid heist was a hoax after all.”

L tried for a gently amused expression, suitable for the Deneuve persona, but felt it must fall very short of Kid’s charm given the look the budding actress gave him. He was sure he could have been much more personable if they’d met in the cafe he suggested, but Miss Furuhata was rushing between filming shoots, and only had time to meet with him in a hall just off the main lobby of Fuji TV’s Odaiba building.

“I think you and I both know that it was truly Kid,” he said quietly. “He may not have taken the theatre’s gem off the stage, but it was definitely him.”

Furuhata smiled. “That would be odd though, wouldn’t it? For Kid to only hold his target and not even try to steal it. And what about all the other Kid appearances in the other performances?”

“Your theatre troupe decided they liked Kid’s addition to the play, and added him as a character. The police and everyone else decided the notice must have been a publicity stunt, and you were all thoroughly scolded, but please stop pretending that I will fall for your ruse. Didn’t you say after all? That Kaito Kid is your ideal man?”

Furuhata’s face went red before she laughed and turned to face him fully.

“I guess you must know him pretty well then, to not be fooled even when Kid acts unlike normal. Fine then.”

“So you admit it was Kid?”

“Yes.” Furuhata sighed then leaned back against the wall again. She looked up at the ceiling with a wistful smile. “It really was Kid that first night.”

She was another of those besotted with the thief. What exactly made Kid an “ideal man” for all these women anyway?

“I would have told the police that if they’d asked me,” she continued. “I would even have told them about meeting Kid before that night, but they never bothered to ask.”

“Wait,” L felt his heart jump. “You met Kid before the actual heist?”

“Oh yes!” Furuhata gave him a mischievous glance, and why was that also a commonality between Kid’s admirers? 

“Tell me,” L said firmly. He even stood straight and tried to use his height to grant more presence to the command. He couldn’t tell how much of an effect it had on the actress since she only looked amused by the move.

“Well, I was practising lines by myself after everyone else left, and Kid caught me.” Her gaze went back to the ceiling again as she recounted her first real meeting with Kid, disguised as a stagehand, and the helpful advice he gave her to instill confidence.

“Then, when Kid changed the whole play and declared himself a simple magician, I was still so scared but Kid--” Furuhata turned to L with a wide grin, “he reminded me again-- Pumpkins! Just imagine the audience is rows of pumpkins! He said to have courage because no one can see through to my heart!”

Furuhata spun and stretched her arms out as if reaching for the whole world.

“And he was right! I’m not scared at all anymore-- I can finally act as much as I want!” She lowered her arms and turned back to L. “And if that old fear raises its head again, I just hear Kid’s voice in my head saying _ pumpkins~ everyone is pumpkins~!” _ She laughed. “He was a great magician for me!”

L stared at her incredulously. He’d known from the report that something more had gone on in this case than anyone knew, but this was not what he expected.

“He really gave you acting advice?” he couldn’t help but repeat. It sounded as though Kid’s entire plan revolved around nothing more than encouraging an amateur actress into overcoming her stage fright. He held the Green Dream for maybe five minutes, then handed it off as if that was always his intention.

“Well, Kid is a performer himself, isn’t he?” Furuhata shrugged with a laugh. “So I’m sure he had to overcome his own fears of the audience at some point.”

That wasn’t something L had considered before. Kid was a thief that acted like a stage magician, but maybe it was accurate the other way around as well. It was something to look into later.

“Forgive me if I seem skeptical, but Kid is never interested in anything but large jewels so…”

“So why would he bother with little old me?” Furuhata grinned at him. L pretended to be abashed. Furuhata shrugged with a chuckle. “I can’t really say for sure, but the sense I got when speaking with him was that he was very kind. If he’d been around the production for even just a day before the show then…”

Furuhata’s eyes grew dark and darted to the ground, then looked back up at L seriously.

“Then he saw how I was being treated, how everyone in the troupe was being treated.”

L stayed quiet while Furuhata tried to settle herself, clearly still disturbed by whatever memories had filled her eyes just then.

“You are referring to the tension between Miss Imaizumi and the rest of the troupe?” 

Reiko Imaizumi, the lead actress of the play Kid interrupted. There hadn’t been much about her in the report, but he knew she was the daughter of the theatre owner, and for unknown reasons she quit after the opening show-- despite reviews that praised her for her subtly cruel acting and the surprise twist at the end.

“Ha!” Furuhata scoffed and leaned her head against the wall as if tired. “Tension is one word for it. Everyone was so scared of losing their jobs that we all let her just walk all over us. If Kid was scouting the theatre for even just one day, then he couldn’t have missed it. She wasn’t friends with anyone.”

So Miss Imaizumi might not have been such a good actress after all. It sounded as though she was simply cruel in general.

“Kid set her character up as the evil step-sister type to your much abused ‘Servant A’ character.”

“Yep!” Furuhata laughed. “That was so funny when he narrated so seriously about ‘Servant A’ and everything!”

“He turned you into Cinderella.” L still wasn’t sure what he thought of that. It fit with Kid’s manipulative personality, but by the time he did it, he already had the jewel in hand. By making everyone focus on Furuhata it helped him escape, but he left without the gem he was supposed to steal. It didn’t make sense.

“I still don’t know how he got that fancy dress costume on top of my servant costume,” Furuhata said with a giggle. “Our costume department tried to figure out a way to replicate it for weeks, and it still never worked as seamlessly as when he did it.”

Kid’s sleight of hand tricks were widely considered to be confusing and impossible to replicate-- even if you knew exactly how he did it, no one could copy that quick, effortless movement Kid had.

“Do you know why he put the Green Dream on your finger… Why he didn’t take it with him?” 

That was the only thing that still didn’t make sense about this heist-- it couldn’t be a heist without a theft after all. L didn’t expect Furuhata to know, but perhaps as an actress she could see something in Kid’s motives that a detective could not.

“Well, of course I do!”

L froze and stared at Furuhata for a full minute. The surprise must have shown, though L was quite certain he hadn’t let his expression move at all from the perplexed Deneuve-smile he wore as he questioned her.

Furuhata giggled. “Oh my gosh! You know he told everyone, right? We even kept the line in the play!”

“He said why he wasn’t stealing the gem?” L cursed that flimsy report once more in his head.

Furuhata gave him a sympathetic look, then struck a pose, confident and tall, one hand languidly reaching out above her, something invisible held in her fingers as she looked up at it.

“I stole this gem as easily as I stole the light! But alas--!” Furuhata’s voice was lower than normal, husky but with an edge that kept it halfway between masculine and feminine tones. She lowered the ‘gem’ sadly and cradled it close to her breast. “It seems this is not the one I’m looking for.”

She turned to L with a charming smile and knelt before him, as elegant as a knight from a fairy tale. L couldn’t move at all when she took his hand and held the ‘gem’ over it, her eyes sparkling as she looked up at him like he was the only person in the world that existed.

“Shall we instead keep this beautiful gem on your beautiful finger?”

L felt his mind whir back into action once Furuhata stopped moving. Her face slowly lost that utterly confident, soft little smile as a much wider, shakier grin came out. He pulled away from her and stuffed both hands safely into his pockets while Furuhata tried not to burst out laughing. He’d actually thought for a moment that Furuhata knew something useful.

“How did he know?” he asked once the actress regained her feet. “That it wasn’t the jewel he wanted?”

“Ah, oh…” Furuhata coughed her laughter away in a fist before thinking about it. “You know, he held the Green Dream up to the moon before saying that part.”

“The moon?” L tilted his head and thought back to the report. It had been so sparse for details, none of Furuhata’s testimony was part of it at all. But it had mentioned a retractable roof opening just after the lights went out. The Kid suspect had “floated down from the moonlit sky” before he joined the performers and altered the play.

He really didn’t approve of how poetic the language in certain reports about Kid could get-- especially when they left out all the important details.

“Yeah, it was very dramatic and beautiful,” Furuhata said approvingly. “Although, well...I don’t know how moonlight would make a jewel stand out from other ones. And he goes after all different kinds of big jewels too.”

“He should already know the color and type of gem if he’s looking for something he can tell apart at a glance,” L agreed with her. 

Kid should already know what he was looking for, that line he said in the play-- almost the same line he always wrote on his return notices-- was a misdirection. Kid wasn’t looking for anything, he only stole for his own amusement.

Down the hall, Furuhata’s agent started to wave. The actress waved back and smiled at him.

“I hope this was helpful to you although, I also hope you don’t hold it against me that I’m rooting for Kid now!”

“I am getting used to that,” L admitted with a wry grin. Furuhata laughed.

“Thank you for your assistance, Miss Furuhata,” he said with a final nod. “You were...more helpful than you know and you are an incredible actress.”

Furuhata blushed and shook her head quickly. “You’re not making me switch from Kid you know! I only told you all that because no one else has asked about it!” She winked at him suddenly before spinning around to rejoin her agent. 

“And in any case,” she called over her shoulder. “You need all the help you can get! Kid can’t be caught after all~!”

L watched her go until she disappeared around a corner, and only then did he allow Deneuve’s smile to fall off his face. So far, her’s had been the most informative interview, granting him both new information and a new perspective to figure Kid out. It was also interesting…. He was fairly certain that every Kid heist occurred on a clear, moonlit night. 

He doubted there was any real reason for it, but if Kid favored nights with clear moonlight, maybe it could be used against him somehow.

* * *

Harry had officially run out of excuses.

Ron had called the Phantom Party, as his friends were calling themselves now, together for the latest heist discussion and it was not going the way Harry had hoped. Everyone brought information on a possible next target and presented them to the group as usual, and then it was Harry’s turn to either pick one or present his own.

For only the third time since they had started these meetings, Harry presented his choice for target, and the group just stared at him incredulously.

Harry coughed. “This jewel does originate from the appropriate time frame,” he said as convincingly as possible. “It only came into the particular family that owns it in the last hundred years or so, but they have some anecdotal history of the jewel being discovered around the same time Flamel supposedly lost track of his experimental stone.”

Ginny and Hermione exchanged a look. George laughed quietly into his hands. Pavarti arched her eyebrow at Harry and Luna just smiled at him, a little more knowingly than usual. After a few minutes of silence, Ron sighed and took charge.

“Okay, Harry, level with us mate. What’s up with all the targets you pick?” he asked.

Harry hid any uncertainty under a blank Kid face. “I’ve only picked two before this, I don’t know what you mean.”

Ron frowned and stood up. “Don’t pull that Kid act with me! We all know what you’re doing you know--”

“It is difficult to keep secrets if you shout, skŭpi moĭ.” Viktor poked his head in from the door to the kitchen. “Would it help your thief group if I went out for dinner? I can bring something back for everyone.”

“No, that’s all right,” Hermione said quickly. She pushed Ron back into his seat. “We’ll try to be more quiet.”

“If you say so,” Viktor gave a shrug and waved at them all as he turned away. “I’ll probably go get something anyway. I think privacy to convince Harry to talk about his soulmate would be best.”

Harry sputtered and sent a glare after the man, but he’d already disappeared. He turned back to the group with a huff and found them all watching him expectantly.

“What?” he laughed lightly. “You guys are being so serious--”

“Harry,” Hermione said, then stopped. She looked at Ron and he sighed again.

“Mate, it's not just your suggestions. We know why you like to pick targets in Japan.”

“I don’t just  pick things in Japan!” Harry said, affronted. “I’ve been to fifteen different countries for heists! Which all of you helped pick out!”

“Eight heists, Harry.” Ginny crossed her arms when everyone looked at her. “You’ve done almost thirty heists in the past two years, and eight of them-- nearly a quarter-- have been in Japan.”

“Yeah, Harry,” Pavarti chimed in with a wince. “The second country you’ve been to as Kid after Japan is the U.S. and that was three heists. Everywhere else you’ve been only once or twice.”

“I only picked two of those heists in Japan though!” Harry protested. “You guys brought the other six up!”

His friends all looked at each other. George gave one last snort into his hands then leaned back with a wide grin.

“Yeah, we all picked out a different target in Japan in turn, just to see if you’d go for them,” he said ruefully. “I think there are still a couple we were going to pass by you, when they became better targets but….”

“But this is getting ridiculous!” Ron said with a huff. “Mate, the clocktower heist made more sense than this-- and everyone knows what a joke that was!”

“That was not a joke!” Harry said angrily. “They were bloody diamonds! What the hell was the problem with it?”

“They were all much too small,” Hermione said as she put her hand on Ron to stop him standing up again. “Flamel’s stone has a minimum size at which the magical core of the liquid inside makes it impervious to any muggle based damage. So while muggles might find Flamel’s stone and recut it to polish and fit it in jewelry, they  _ can’t _ make it smaller than a certain size.” 

“Yeah, and those diamonds in the clock were all broken and cut from a couple larger gems, and they ended up way too small to be what we're after,” George said.

“Not to mention we knew going in that the real ones had already been taken out and sold,” Ginny added.

“I think it was nice,” Luna spoke up. “Protecting the clock and getting the police to investigate that man who wanted to destroy the tower when so many people liked it so much.”

Pavarti laughed. “Yeah, Kid’s a real hero to the people thanks to silly heists like the clocktower.”

“But, the point is,” Ron gave Harry a serious look, “we all know that you tend to pick heists in Japan a lot more often-- and for reasons other than looking for Flamel’s stone. So, we just want you to admit it.”

“The clocktower heist was the best one,” Harry mumbled as he glared uncomfortably at the table. “It was the hardest theft to pull off ever. The police were a lot smarter than usual.”

“Was not,” Ginny muttered back at him. “No one shot at you.”

“Did too!” Harry sniffed. “Well, I mean, they shot near me, at the tarp.”

“Definitely not as bad as a dozen crazy muggles firing machine guns in the air trying to kill you,” George said, a grin on his face, but voice so severe no one mistook his words for a joke.

“Okay, no one shot machine guns at Harry.” Hermione stood up and drew attention back to her instead of the sudden standoff. “Mostly. But we’re getting off topic.”

“That’s right,” Ron joined in before Harry could protest. “We want to talk about why you pick so many heists in Japan, Harry. You're not getting out of it!”

“If you guys don’t want me going to Japan anymore, then I won’t--” Harry started to say, but everyone groaned and yelled at him all at once.

“Oh for Merlin’s sake--!”

“You’re killing me, Harry.  _ Killing me!” _

“What an idiot, I can’t believe how smart everyone thinks Kid is, when you are such an unbelievable idiot!”

Harry glared at them all and waited for them to calm down. Eventually they did, but Luna spoke up before he had a chance to.

“We know you really want to meet your soulmate, even if you say you don’t, Harry.” Luna smiled at him, soft and understanding, and around the table his friends all nodded in agreement.

“There’s nothing wrong with it you know,” Pavarti added sympathetically. “Lots of people have really stupid first words with their soulmates-- just look at Ron and Hermione!”

“Thank you, Pavarti.” Hermione sent her a sour look which she winked at, while Ron just rubbed his head awkwardly. “But,” she turned back to Harry, “she does have a point.”

“Yeah, it’s not like the first words even matter!” Ginny said. “It’s everything after that’s important.”

“And what if what’s after for me, is getting arrested and locked up in a muggle jail for the rest of my life?” Harry snorted.

“Oh come on!” George slapped the table and leaned back in his chair. “We all know you wouldn’t stay there-- and if the magical world intervened, they couldn’t pin anything on you because all our laws are about stealing from each other. Only crimes you can commit against muggles are if you use magic on them, and we make sure all Kid’s tricks are perfectly non-magical!”

“I still find that perfectly disturbing,” Hermione muttered under her breath, but they’d talked about the inherent unfairness of magical law before and no one seemed to want to do so now.

“You just want to be mad at your soulmate when you haven’t even met them yet--” George continued.

“--And considering you only go to Japan as Kid--” Ginny cut in.

_ “--And _ the only people you meet are police and sometimes the people you steal from--” Pavarti joined them.

“--Then  _ of course _ your soulmate’s first words to you are gonna be something any normal person would say to a thief!” George finished. “We all know it, and we know you know it too! It’s why you keep picking random heists to do in Japan.”

“The sapphire necklace,” Ginny said with a grin. Harry frowned at her-- that had been her suggestion for a heist only ten months ago after all.

“The goddess statue,” George added, also grinning because that one was  _ his _ suggestion.

“The cat’s eye ring,” Luna piped up cheerfully with her suggestion, which Harry had just done only a few months ago.

“Then the crown, and that ruby made of glass.” Hermione rolled her eyes as she added to the list. “But honestly, the so-called emerald in that play and the tiny diamonds in the clocktower were the _most_ ridiculous,” she stated those two heists-- which Harry himself had suggested-- with a sardonic smirk.

“What about that family jewel--” Ron added his contribution to the Japan based heists to the list. Everyone, even Harry, groaned as memories of that particular theft were brought up. Ron winced and looked down at the table sheepishly. “Nevermind.”

“Anyway, what we’re trying to say, Harry,” Hermione said with a cough. “Is that we’ve known for a while how much you really, really--”

“Really,  _ really!” _ Ginny and Pavarti and George all said together in a sing-song.

Hermione pursed her lips but didn’t look away from Harry. “--want to meet your soulmate. You’re worried it will hurt, and none of us blame you. But you still _want_ to-- and trying to pretend you don’t is not going to work anymore. Especially not when you bring things like  _ this,” _ she held up the paper printout Harry had pulled out to make his suggestion today, “to us and expect us to take it seriously.”

“It’s from the right time period--” Harry argued with a wince.

“Maybe,” Ginny interjected. “According to rumors.”

“--and it’s technically a big jewel,” he spoke more softly at the end. He already knew it was a weak argument, and exactly what his friends would say.

“It’s a pearl, mate,” Ron said derisively. “A bloody  _ pearl. _ There’s no way it could be Flamel’s stone.”

Harry slumped back with a defeated sigh. “I just… there’s not really a lot of big jewels in easy access in Japan.”

“We know, Harry,” Luna said happily.

“Yeah,” Pavarti rolled her eyes with a grin, “trust us-- we  _ know.” _

“Researching big jewels for Kid to steal in Japan is kind of a pain,” George agreed with a serious nod. “But a pearl? C’mon.”

Harry rubbed a hand over his face. “I’m sorry, I-- I didn’t think you guys would agree if I used Kid for something other than the Flamel hunt.”

“We understand, Harry,” Hermione said. She pulled her chair closer and sat next to him with an arm around his shoulders. “We’re just upset that you seem to think you need to trick us into helping you, when we’d help if you just ask us.”

Harry blinked and looked around the table. “Wait-- so, you mean, you’ll help me pull off heists just to look for my soulmate?”

“It really is so sad what an idiot Kid is,” Ginny said with a sigh, “and we’re the only ones who know!”

George shook his head and wiped a fake tear from his eye. “If only the world knew how much the Phantom Party did to help Kid look good!”

“You guys are the worst,” Harry said, but he was smiling. George and Ginny grinned back at him. “So, does this mean we can go after the pearl? Even though it has nothing to do with Flamel?”

His friends shared glances and smiles before turning to him. “Well, you’d probably do it anyway if we say no,” Ron said. “And Kid wouldn’t last five minutes without us, so, yeah. We’re going after a pearl!”

The Phantom Party cheered and Harry just grinned helplessly at them all. It didn’t even matter anymore if his soulmate was awful or not. When Harry finally found them, whatever happened, he had his friends at his back the whole way. 

  
  



End file.
